


Still I Will Live Here

by apollos



Series: all the times in-between [5]
Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Body Image, Coda, Drug Addiction, Eating Disorders, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Psychoanalysis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-11-02 03:35:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20608823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apollos/pseuds/apollos
Summary: Somebody's got to take care of Mac, but somebody's got to take care of Dennis, too. Coda for 7x01, "Frank's Pretty Woman."





	Still I Will Live Here

**Author's Note:**

> TW TW TW for eating disorders and disordered eating thoughts. going real deep into dennis's mind here, folks.

_i will take good care of you _  
_everything you feel is good _  
_if you would only let you _  
_i will wash your hair at night _  
_and dry it off with care _  
_i will see your body bare _  
_and still i will live here_

mitski, "i will"

"I gotta say, bro. I still want to do some crack."

"What?" Mac looks at Dennis, keys literally in the door of their apartment. He takes the hand from the knob and faces him fully, his head preening back like an offended chicken. "Even after watching that whore die of a crack-induced heart attack?"

"Yeah, I mean." Dennis brings a sheepish hand to the back of his neck and smiles at Mac. He is not sheepish: he is thinking that if he acts the part, maybe Mac will indulge him. "Ever since Dee and I got addicted to it, I. I think about it all the time."

"That's addiction, bro." Mac crosses his arms over his chest, which really is over that new mass of fat he's developed. Dennis had noticed it, of course, and Dennis had noticed Mac's eating habits, but Dennis had not _realized _it as he did today. Something crossed the line; bloating from the trash bag chimichangas, maybe. The doctor announcing Mac's impending death, more likely Dennis touches his own stomach, over the Tommy Bahama shirt.

"Yes, Mac, but." Dennis smiles at him. "I _promise _you'll like it."

"Where are we gonna get crack from, Dennis, huh?" Mac shifts his weight around on his feet. "You know somebody that sells crack?"

"I do, actually. Old hookups, from that time—"

"We are _not _going to go get crack from some chick you used to bang that probably now hates you—"

"No, you idiot! _Drug _hookups." Dennis groans. "Haven't you ever watched, fuck, I don't know. Movies! About drugs!"

Only when Mac takes a step back and props his eyebrows up like he does does Dennis realize he's been shouting. He sways towards the door. The chimichanga from earlier feels slick and heavy in his stomach, a brick pulled from a sewer. He lurches forward.

"Are you gonna puke?" Mac swoops in immediately, grabs Dennis by around his shoulders.

"Yeah, I think so—"

Mac does not carry Dennis, but he does open the door as quick as he can and drags Dennis by his shoulders into the apartment, closing it with a foot. Dennis lolls on Mac's shoulder, walking the best he can, and he throws up for the first time down the front of Mac's shirt, until Mac's able to get him in the bathroom and in front of the toilet. Dennis's vision darkens, his body operating on hateful animal instinct alone. The chimichanga, and then just stomach bile, he coughs weakly, and Mac is still there.

"I ruined your shirt," Dennis says when he thinks he's done, sliding down onto the bathroom floor. He starts to shiver. Mac is sitting on the rim of the bathtub, watching Dennis. Mac hands him a glass of water, though Dennis can't remember Mac actually getting up to get that glass of water.

"What? No. It's fine." Mac looks down at his shirt as if realizing it for himself, and then unbuttons it and throws it into the bathtub behind him. "Please, puke on a shirt? I've had _much _worse." He maneuvers Dennis up and presses the glass of water more firmly in his hands. Mac looks a million miles away, on top of a skyscraper while Dennis wallows on the tile floor below.

Dennis is sober, literally empty, but he _feels _drunk. Light-headed and like he's falling down a well in slow motion. He brushes his hand against Mac's knee. "Why?"

Mac crinkles his nose. "I mean, we run a _bar_, and I've had to deal with more dead bodies than I would personally choose—"

"No, no, no," Dennis mumbles, shaking his head. He goes to take a big swig of the water, but Mac's hand stops him, telling him _just sip it, or you'll throw it back up_, and Dennis listens, even though some part of his brain is telling him that throwing up some more would be _good_. He feels shitty, yes, but he also feels like he's gotten to a high, even without the crack. Maybe crack would make this better. He puts the water down on the bathroom floor and slides further, but Mac catches him under the arms again.

People starve. People starve for a variety of reasons. Some, Dennis knows, believe it will bring them closer to God. To loosen that connection, to bring the mundane into the world of the supreme. Dennis doesn't believe in God, no matter how many times Mac sits him down and reads the Bible to him, or invites Dennis to his church, or—well, it's not Mac that makes Dennis not believe in God. Dennis learned about nihilism in college. Dennis knew it in his soul before that. People starve, and it does weaken that link, and it does feel transcendental, and Dennis feels transcendental. Dennis _must _feel transcendental.

Mac brings him to a bed—Dennis's bed, Dennis's room. The features, his shelves and his model cars, come into a lazy focus. The familiar. Mac unbuttons Dennis's shirt and his jeans, unties his shoes and places them nicely against the wall like Dennis likes, unfolds the comforter. Dennis sits on the sheets like a little kid, young enough to be dressed and undressed by Mommy (by Daddy) and looks at him. "Why," he repeats.

"What do you mean, why?" Mac asks, standing up.

"Why do you do this?" Dennis says. "Why do you take care of me?"

Dennis knows the answer.

Mac says, "You're my best friend."

That's not the answer.

Mac tucks Dennis in. His hands do not linger.

In the morning Dennis wakes alone, his head pounding. He is not hungover, just sick and tired and sore, so he remembers last night: he remembers Mac leaving the room after that, bringing back all the blankets from his room and wrapping them around Dennis, and then leaving again. Dennis, hot from the inside out and sweaty now, fights out from under the jumble of blankets and steps out of bed, testing the waters of the morning. His mouth tastes awful. His body feels light.

His door at first refuses to open. He jiggles and jams and pushes against whatever mass is blocking it, thinking maybe Mac has lost it and locked him in to starve and die, but the mass slides and the door opens enough for Dennis to shimmy out.

"Shit," Dennis says, looking down at a slumped and sleeping Mac. It must be early, Mac still asleep, the sun seemingly low in the sky. "I really _can't _move you." He laughs to himself. Tells himself to remember that, to say it to Mac later.

He sits down beside Mac and stares at him. He looks like shit, fat like this, he breathes audibly and snores in a way that isn't cute at all, and Dennis hates it. Hates it a lot. Mac did used to be able to lift Dennis up, to fuck him against walls and carry him from room-to-room when necessary. Not for long, and it would leave him winded, but he coulddo it if he wanted to, if Dennis asked, and Dennis always knew what he wanted and when to ask. It could not be Dennis making this a problem; Dennis has gotten even lighter, surely, light as the feathers on and the hollow bones inside a hummingbird. It must be Mac. He's not been using Dennis's gym membership as much, must have lost some muscle and replaced it with the weight. Dennis should threaten him with cancelling it if he doesn't return.

Why, Dennis thinks, and he wonders if he had asked the wrong question last night. Maybe it should have been, _why have you given up on yourself_? But Dennis thinks he knows that answer, too, and he knows that Mac would say _I haven't, bro, I'm just cultivating mass_, some extreme version of carbo-loading, and Dennis knows the answer is _because I have to take care of you_.

Dennis is not going to eat breakfast today. He considers going to the kitchen and pouring some cereal and milk in a bowl, then flushing it down the toilet before Mac wakes up. He could leave the bowl on the table with a stained-milk rim and cereal flecks and Mac would complain because Mac would have to wash it, and Dennis would say something back, but it would be _normal_. Dennis would watch Mac do the dishes from the couch, listen to him whistle the dumb little tunes he whistles while he house-keeps. Dennis would drink from one of the special beers, the ones with the bottles tinted so dark Mac can't see it's actually just watered-down vodka inside. They could have a nice day together. Go get Mac some chimichangas. Watch the Flyers game. Dennis would let Mac talk about the players' form and let the double meaning slide without the jabbing jokes that Dennis should probably stop making, lest this whole thing fall down on top of their all too human bodies, strained by the weight Mac now carries for the both of them. Dennis would do the normal thing, move closer and closer like a nervous teenager, until an intermission comes and then he would kiss Mac, work his way onto his lap, have sex—

This is a good idea, but Dennis is tired. He shelves it for later. His mouth tastes like vomit, his stomach muscles keep cramping up, his head hurts. Mac is still asleep, snoring softly and arrhythmically. It should be annoying, but Dennis has always hated loud rhythmic noises more than the quiet irregularities, and right now it's just proof that Mac is alive and breathing. Dennis curls himself up under his arm, drags that arm over his back, rests his cheek on Mac's stomach—if nothing else, he's soft.

Dennis doesn't want soft. Dennis _hates _soft. But for now, he shoves their bodies together as much as he can in this uncomfortable little nook outside Dennis's room, in this tiny patch of liminal space, seized by coldness in these hollow bones of his, and he falls back asleep while refining the details of his plans moving forward, emptied cereal bowls and holding scissors to a membership card.

Tomorrow. Today, Dennis is tired.


End file.
